A Day NOT to Remember!

It was early August and the weather was sweltering even for this time of year. Alizabella, not one for liking hot weather, spent her days sucking on ice lollies and lapping up ice cold drinks just to not feel uncomfortable. Candy was lounging about on the grass, Eylora was upstairs having a temper tantrum, also an ailment of the uncomfortable hot weather, and Jenniola was out somewhere, where she was no one knew.

I sat at the table reading the recent copy of the Neopian Times, the fan on full blast and a glass of water with three large ice cubes bobbing up and down at the surface sat on the table next to me. I turned the page, read a supplement that seemed to be able to tear off the page and took a sip of my water before reading a second time.

Free admission to every attraction on Terror Mountain, it read. I continued to read. This ticket is valid for up to four Neopets and an owner. Petpets are not included in this great Terror Mountain Fun Time Ticket. Tear ticket from page and bring to Terror Mountain.

"This is great!" I said to myself. "It's just what we need! Free admission to all attractions! Cool, I can get as many scratch cards as I want all for free!"

I gulped the rest of my water, dribbling as I did in my excitement, and called my Neopets. Eylora wiped her eyes and sobbed although not as violently as before and Alizabella sauntered towards the kitchen table and plopped herself down on one of the plush seats. Candy, being the rebel that he was, plainly ignored me and lay on the grass, his head resting on his arms and his eyes half closed.

"Candy, will you come inside please? I've got something I think you'll like!"

"Naah," he replied idly. "I'm soaking up the rays so if you could just leave me in peace…"

I slammed my fists on the table, knocking over the glass of water but hardly thankful that it was empty.

"I'll leave you in pieces if you don't do as you're told, young man!" I yelled. Now get in here!"

Obviously sensing the anger in my voice, Candy shot up and ran into the kitchen panting and sweating.

"Gee, s-someone's angry," he gasped, trying to catch his breath.

I glared at him and then pointed to the page.

"Read!"

He did. His eyes bulged and he looked at me with those large Kiko eyes of his and said hopefully "We're definitely going aren't we?"

"If everyone agrees to it, yes," I replied. "Where's Jenniola?"

"Out," Candy replied. "Gone to the Chocolate Factory me thinks."

"Candy," I said sharply. "What have I told you about talking like that? It's 'I think' not 'me thinks'!"

"Gee, I'm so sorry Miss Mardy Ginger," he said in an unapologetic manner. "I'll make sure to use proper Neopian in the future. Okay?" he finished glaring at me.

Just then the front door flew open and Jenniola charged in with a handful of chocolate in her hooves.

"Just a few snacks," she said. "Mind if I take these upstairs, Ginger?"

"No need. Take a look at this."

She peered at the ticket, read it and then jumped up and down. Her hooves clanked on the shiny kitchen floor.

"Cool!" she looked around, found that no one had caught on, and giggled to herself. "Literally cool," she added. Candy rolled his eyes.

"Everyone wants to go then?" I asked.

"Yesyesyes!" shouted Eylora so fast that it sounded like she was talking in an alien language.

"Okay then," I said. "You have half an hour to get yourselves ready. Remember, wear warm clothes. Eylora, your scarf is in the cupboard next to your bed. Very bottom shelf."

"Okay," she replied and hopped excitedly upstairs.

Less than half an hour later my pets raced into the kitchen. The grown pets wore backpacks containing their winter clothes but Eylora, being naïve, wore her scarf and bright pink bobble hat.

"Eylora, take those off and put them in your backpack like your brother and sisters. You'll dehydrate wearing those in this heat. Did you know that it's 100 degrees F out there?"

"But I thought you said it was COLD!" she exclaimed with a pout.

"Terror Mountain is, dear. It's not cold in Neopia Central though."

"Ohhh," she replied. "Hee hee, how silly of me!"

"Too right," Candy muttered under his breath.

Eylora stamped her foot on the ground and frowned. "I heard that! I'm gonna get you back when I'm old enough!"

"Oooh, I'm shaking with fear!" he said mockingly. "I'm shaking so much I can hear the house rattle!"

"Candy, that was a lame comeback," Jenniola said, rolling her eyes.

"Oh, you think so huh?" he growled. "And what about your stupid joke about Terror Mountain being cool? That was way more lame than mine!"

"That was lamer," I corrected him, hoping to break the pointless argument as well as correcting him.

It didn't. By now Jenniola had grabbed her brother round the throat threateningly.

"It wasn't lame! If you say another horrible world to me I swear I'll…"

"Guys, guys, GUYS!" I yelled. "Cut it out! Now! Keep arguing like this and we're liable not to go to Terror Mountain at all."

They stopped arguing but still scowled at each other for a few seconds afterwards. Candy and Jenniola hardly ever got on. It was rare for me to see them acting lovingly to each other like a proper brother and sister but I admit it did happen…sometimes.

Helping to put Eylora's winter wear into her bag and then ripping the ticket from the newspaper and popping it into my pocket, I told the other three to wait outside and call an Eyrie Taxi while they waited. The Eyrie Taxi was flying towards the ground in a blur of blue and it finally touched down on the grass by the side of the street. We hopped on and I made sure that Eylora was close to me as the Eyrie descended fastly into the sky heading towards Terror Mountain.

* * *

"Finally here!" said Eylora happily, as we stepped onto the crispy white snow. I had been here a few times but my Neopets hadn't. Never did they see snow this deep before. As my Neopets and I looked in awe at the beautiful scenery we took a vote, a not very smooth vote to say the least, about what to do first.

"Let's go see the Snowager!" screamed Eylora, her little voice buzzing with excitement.

"Nooo!" came a voice in a choked whimper. "Not the Snowager! Please!"

It was Candy. His eyes were wider than usual and his teeth were clenched. He clasped his hands together nervously.

"Oh, for Fyora's sake, Candy!" I snapped. "I thought you were supposed to be brave. That's what you keep telling us anyway. Why don't you start acting brave for once? Anyway, let's go to the Scratch card Kiosk. I bet this ticket"- I reached into my pocket, pulled the ticket out and held it up -"will come in very handy. We can each have a scratch card each for free!"

We trekked along the snow, north to the Ice Caves and in the meantime Candy was complaining that his hands stung from the cold.

"Quit complainin'!" I yelled. "You're more trouble than you're worth! You don't see your sisters moaning all the time, do you?"

"Sorry!" he whined. "But I can't help it if my hands sting, can I? Anyway, it's the snows fault not mine!"

The three girls argued with their brother telling him to respect Terror Mountain and other such things and none of us noticed when we walked straight into the Snowager's lair. There was a huge roar, a mighty sound of parts of the cave walls collapsing, and the abrupt gushes of cold air that bellowed from the Snowager's huge, lethal jaws that knocked us straight into reality.

I grabbed Eylora by her two back feet as she was too numb to move, and threw her across to the entrance.

"Run!" I yelled.

She did just that. The others ran past me and I swivelled and ran out, puffing and heaving and shaking with cold to the entrance of the lair and back into the Ice Caves.

"Oh…my…goodness!" I heaved, clutching my chest with one hand. "Are you alright? Eylora you look dreadful. Are you okay?"

She didn't speak; she just looked up at me with those beautiful blue eyes of hers, probably just thankful that she had made it out alive. They all looked pretty shaken up. I was too. In fact, my heart was pounding, my mouth was dry, my legs had turned to jelly and I felt ready to collapse at any given moment. I plopped myself down on the snow.

"Do we have to sit here?" Alizabella enquired. "Can't we do something else?"

I stared at her in disbelief. Did she really just say that or was I imagining it?

"Alizabella," I began, "we were nearly brutally killed by the Snowager and you expect us all to carry on as though nothing had ever happened?"

"Yeah," she replied, oblivious to the point that I was trying to get across to her.

They all started after that. They weren't old like me. They were young and brimming with excitement and could obviously not sit down for more than five minutes.

"Ginger!" yelled Candy out of the blue. "You really need to get a life!"

"I beg your pardon, mister?! What did you just say?"

Candy winked at the others and they began to dart off, me hot on their tails. My fists were flailing as I tried desperately to catch up with them. No one talked to me like that.

"Come and get me, Ginger!" shouted Candy as he waved his hands in the air. Before I could even put one foot in front of the other, he darted off again. I finally found them in the Scratch card kiosk.

"Sorry Ginger," Candy said, a real apologetic tone in his voice. "It was the only way to make you get up. Recovered from your shock now I bet, haven't you?"

Well, he was right. It probably was the only way I would have gotten up, and it definitely did cure my shock, if only a little bit.

"Welcome to the Scratch card Kiosk!" greeted the famous Wocky donned in his glorious coloured clothing. "600 Neopoints please."

"Oh, I've got this." I pulled the ticket from my pocket and handed it to the Wocky. He looked at it with a puzzled look on his face and then handed it back to me.

"This ticket is a month out of date!"

"What?" I asked, confusion clouding my mind. "But I saw it in the recent copy of the Neopian Times."

"Can't have," the Wocky said. "The ticket was only available in last months issues. I'm sorry but you'll have to pay the full price."

I looked at my pets dismally, remembering how I store all past issues of the Neopian Times in my cupboard and had gotten one out to check back on something. I told them, saw the look of frustration on their faces and finished with an apology.

"Guess we'll just have to buy one then," Jenniola said. "It's only 600np anyways."

I handed the money to the Wocky and he gave me a scratch card in return.

"Congratulations!" he said cheerfully. "You now have a Race to Riches Scratch Card!

"Is that all?" cried Eylora and Jenniola together.

"We paid 600 Neopoints for the most common scratch card?" Candy retorted.

The Wocky glanced around at four sets of disappointed eyes glaring at him.

"Y-You can still win 10,000np on these kind!" he stuttered, obviously feeling embarrassed.

The embarrassment was not only in his voice but in his cheeks as well. My face burned too as I watched his face turn bright red. You could always count on my Neopets to make a situation so embarrassing that you wish the ground would swallow you up.

"Let's scratch it then!" hollered Alizabella who had tried not to get involved with her siblings' behaviour.

"We better win big on this," Candy muttered under his breath.

We gathered around as Candy took the card, picked a panel with some thought and scratched it. 2500 showed up.

"Not bad!" I said, trying to keep the mood a happy and positive one.

He picked the next one and it was a blank. We all sighed drearily as Candy scratched another blank and then another one. Tension was high now and a positive outlook was fading fast. 2500 neopoints was the maximum we could win now and it would be tight to even win it. The last two panels would have to be ones with the '2500' symbol on it.

Candy picked the last two carefully. He scratched the panel in the top left corner to reveal 2500. My heart was beating faster as he picked the last remaining panel. He scratched it quickly to reveal a…

"A blank?!" he screeched at the top of his voice. "Four blanks on a single scratch card!? That's not right! This is daylight robbery!" His face had turned purple. "I'm gonna make sure you never sell any scratch card ever again! I'll make sure you go bankrupt!" He tore the scratch card into little pieces and threw them up into the air. He stormed off and my other Neopets followed him, eager to escape the commotion Candy had caused. As usual I was left with the aftermath of my Kiko's attitude problem.

"I'm sorry," I murmured as I hung my head in utter shame.

"Your Neopets are banned from here," he said abruptly, not caring for my lame attempt at trying to make peace with the Wocky. "And I seriously suggest anger management for that Kiko of yours."

"I promise to have a word with him. He's not usually like that. I'm really sorry about all of this."

I turned around, not looking into his eyes, hung my head in shame and walked out. My Neopets were waiting for me outside and Candy wore and expression of annoyance on his face.

"Four blanks," he muttered. "That Wockie's got a nerve selling rigged scratch cards."

"Candy," I said. "Don't you think you're overreacting just a little bit? How do you think I feel being humiliated in front of him like that? Even worse, how do you think he feels? It's not right you lashing out at everyone just because something didn't go your way! Oh, he's banned you all from the kiosk and I must say, I'm not the least bit surprised."

Candy said nothing, only shrugged as if not to care less.

"Where can we go now, Ginger?" asked Eylora impatiently.

"Home," I grunted. "This day's been a complete farce."

"Home?" she asked, tears welling in her eyes. "But I still want to see everything!"

"Well if you lot hadn't been such a pain we wouldn't have to go home, would we? You can't blame anyone else but yourselves."

We walked back through the Ice Caves and into the fresh crisp air to catch an Eyrie Taxi home. Suddenly though, totally out of the blue, when I thought things couldn't possibly get any worse, a yellow snowball came hurtling from nowhere, hitting an unaware Candy right between the eyes. He fell backwards into the cold snow.

"WHO DID THAT!?" he bellowed, shooting up and wiping the snow off his face in quick swipes. He glanced around to see a Blumaroo giggling and running for cover. Candy scooped up a handful of snow and threw it at the Blumaroo, missing him by inches.

"Time for plan B!" my Kiko shouted through gritted teeth.

He charged for the Blumaroo knocking him to the ground.

"Get offa me!" he squirmed but Candy wouldn't. There was a flurry of fists and soon the whole population of Terror Mountain had gathered around to watch. I bounded over, pulled them off each other and banged their heads together.

"In future, Blumaroo, don't throw snowballs! And Candy, control that temper of yours! Come on! We're leaving!"

I grabbed Candy by the arm and pulled him towards the Eyrie Taxi that had just touched down. Throwing him up onto the Eyrie's back, I climbed on and yelled frustratingly for the girls to do the same. As the saying went 'A day to remember', this one certainly wasn't.

THE END